Delta Air Lines drops Israeli settlement snack from onboard meals

Delta Air Lines, one of the world’s largest carriers, will stop serving snacks manufactured in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank on its flights from Tel Aviv.

Who Profits, a research project of the Tel Aviv-based Coalition of Women for Peace, learned that Delta Air Lines will stop serving the Ahva Vanilla Halva bar, three weeks after a customer filed a complaint with the company’s legal department.

In the copy of Delta’s email to the customer that I received from Who Profits, Delta Air Lines writes:

We are in receipt of your letter to the Delta Law Department dated July 2, 2013 and the subsequent communication sent on July 25, 2013. We apologize for the delay in our response.

Delta has notified our local catering company to discontinue serving the Vanilla Halva bar in meals onboard Delta flights from Israel.

Please let us know if you have any additional questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Specialist, Corporate Customer Care
Delta Air Lines

WhoProfits (whoprofits.org) did not release the name of the customer, at the customer’s request.

Illegal settlement business

The Ahva Vanilla Halva bar is produced by Ahdut Factory for Tehina Halva and Sweets. The company has a factory and its main offices in the Barkan Industrial Zone in the occupied West Bank, writes Who Profits in a 31 July email. Ahdut further profits from Israel’s settlement enterprise by running another production site in the industrial zone of Ariel West, also in the occupied West Bank.

The Electronic Intifada provided details of the case, including the case number, to the Delta Air Lines corporate communications department in Atlanta, Georgia, in writing and in several conversations by telephone, in order to give the company ample opportunity to deny or challenge any of the facts reported here. The company declined to do so.

Thanks to the reactive customer, Who Profits in Israel and an investigative reporter with a fine eye for significant details, the information is out there for the public eye. This is journalism worthy of its name.

Fortunately I can get anywhere using other airlines. Delta used to be the best in the sky. Unfortunately, and without reference to the halva, they became very sloppy. Now add shortsightedness to sloppy.